This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Seven Seals: "In the earliest computer and console RPGs, this was a matter of economy; every kilobyte was precious and couldn't be wasted on extraneous houses or people. The tradition has continued into the modern day due to a combiination of artistic inertia, The Law Of Conservation Of Detail, and just plain laziness on the part of writers and programmers."
I take some issue with this. The Law of Conservation of Detail is the overruling concern here, and laziness doesn't factor into it, except in the most egregious cases (combining things that have no logical reason to be combined). It's still a matter of economy, except that it's not measured in bytes but in man hours. You simply can't afford to put in too many things that are not directly relevant to a game, even with limitless storage. The cost for adding detail that matters is disproportional.
If you doubt this, have you actually given some thought to what it would mean to put an entire city with all accoutrements in a game? Calling a hundredfold increase in workload (conservatively, if we're just talking your basic medieval fantasy town) for no appreciable gain other than to achieve realism ("wow, I can talk to all these people!") is not something I'd call "just plain laziness".
You'll notice that the games who try to move away from this trope mostly do so in appearance, not substance, and it doesn't add to game play. Adding an army of people who have nothing interesting to say or do isn't that hard, and it looks a little better. Ditto for adding houses that are permanently locked or empty. You still won't find games who try to convince you that the economy makes sense, because this just doesn't pay off. It's a game, not a simulator.
Danel: I'd agree with this, but add that even more than that it can actually detract from the game. It might have been Summoner or Summoner 2... the towns are huge. Some of the people will give you sidequests. I realised after about half an hour that I really couldn't be bothered trudging around to find out /who/.
BT The P: You actually can interact with the wanderers in Twilight Princess: you can show up as your wolf form, and scare the begodesses out of them. It's enormously satisfying.
Ununnilium: How's that edit strike you?
Phartman: "Begodesses?" C'mon; just say crap.
Seth: I contest the Oblivion bit. The AI in oblivion is amazing like sims all people have basic needs food sleep ect ect. Follow any NPC around - guard, shopkeeper, beggar random peon and they will all eventually sleep. Everyone you can see has a bed somewhere in the world. The population is still lower than you would expect for an entire country but even the bandits have beds in their camps.
Duckluck: Bethesda really tried, but the fact remains that the capital city of a continent spanning empire only has a couple hundred people and there do seem to be fewer NP Cs in Oblivion than there were in Morrowind, which given that Oblivion is set in an entire country while Morrowind was set in a sparsely populated corner of an outer province, doesn't make a lot of sense.
"* Mass Effect's Citadel is the capital city of half the galaxy, containing a population of 13.2 million. The actual number of NPCs, including unimportant ones, is about 150. This is actually a case of the handwave mentioned in the description, since part of the Citadel is a group of five arms, each one roughly the size of Manhattan. They're also completely irrelevant to the story and the player only gets to visit the upper-class political area of the station that connects the arms, as well as a tiny marketplace on one of the arms, but no further.
- The Citadel is more of a Gateless Ghetto than a Thriving Ghost Town. You can see the rest of it through the windows in the wards level but you can never access any of it.
- The population is still a bit sparse if you compare it to the descriptions in the novels. They describe the Wards filled to the brim with people of all races, resulting in constant massive crowds to get lost in. The Wards level you see in the game is practically deserted compared to that description. "
- The Citadel is more of a Gateless Ghetto than a Thriving Ghost Town. You can see the rest of it through the windows in the wards level but you can never access any of it.
This Troper just did the math and got 287.6 folks/square kilometer. Manhattan has something closer to 71 thousand per square mile. Granted, metric vs. imperial, but still: the Citadel has nothing like Manhattan's population density.
